The Federal Reserve is commonly depicted as an institution set up to fulfill domestic functions, only later taking on its significant international and geopolitical dimensions. In this view, the Fed’s origins are found in various domestic concerns, such as bankers’ desire to cartelize themselves, exporters’ bid to make the American financial system more stable and liquid so as not to rely on London for loans, farmers’ project to break up New York’s “money trust” and spread financial services more evenly throughout the country, and the collective desire to put an end to the apparently endemic panic in US money markets.